The raising of domestic animals and particularly cows is a very demanding task as the cows must be attended to on a daily basis for milking, cleaning and feeding. The milking is usually done early in the morning and late afternoon. Accordingly, a dairy farm having 100 or more cows results in a very labour-intensive business. Usually such dairy farms are operated by a family and because cows have to be attended to on a daily basis, as well as other chores associated with such a farm, the leisure activities of the family are quite restrained as one cannot leave a herd of cows unattended for long periods of time. A cow must be taken care of on a daily basis.
Modern machinery has been developed whereby to facilitate the milking of cows, the feeding and the cleaning of stalls. For example, automatic milking apparatus have been developed wherein a robotic arm is used for attaching a teat-cup to an animal's teat but labour is still required to herd the cows one-by-one into the apparatus and position the cow precisely therein. Although the milking is done automatically, such operation is often more labour-intensive in that the cows must be removed from their stalls, brought to the milking machine and then returned to the stalls. U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,028 is an example of such an automatic milking machine.
In order to alleviate the problem of shuttling the cows from their stalls to the milking apparatus, milking parlors have been developed and including a shuttle stall which loads an animal thereon, backs it up to a milking station, advances the cow out of the milking station and releases it in a release area wherein the cows then need to be brought to their stalls and repositioned therein or released outdoors to pasture. Again this is labour-intensive process as the cows must be herded or removed from the stalls and returned thereto. Also, the stall arrangements often create traffic jams as the cows must be displaced in front of shuttle stalls which are occupied during the milking process. It is also manually required to position the cow on the shuttle stalls and secure it thereon by operating displaceable gates. These shuttle stalls only move from a loading position to a milking position and then are unloaded when the stall is brought back to the loading position. The stall moves forward and backward along a straight axis, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,814,026. Another milking parlor arrangement is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,086,348.
The above-referred to prior art are examples of the progress being made to try to automate a milking farm in an attempt to reduce the job functions of its operators. However, these modern machines and systems still require too much labour as the cows still need the human element to herd them in groups to these machines which means releasing them from their private stalls during winter months and then bringing them back to their stalls and attaching them therein.